Alabama Murderer Faces February 6 Execution

A Michigan man convicted of the 1991 rape, robbery and murder of 40-year-old Pauline Brown in her Birmingham, Alabama apartment is challenging his death sentence set for February 6. The facts presented at trial and multiple appeals indicate that on the night of November 27, 1991, Demetrius Frazier noticed a light on in Brown’s ground-floor apartment. He entered the apartment through a window and found $10 in cash. He then went to another room, where he found Brown asleep. After waking her up, Frazier demanded more money, and she gave him $80. Frazier then threatened her with a gun, and raped her as she begged for her life. When he was finished he shot her in the back of the head.  After confirming that nobody heard the shot, Frazier made sure that Brown was dead, searched the apartment for more money, ate two bananas and left, throwing his gun in a ditch. Ralph Chapoco of the Alabama Reflector reports that attorneys for Frazier are petitioning in Federal District Court for a stay of execution claiming that the state’s use of nitrogen gas will cause him to suffer, in violation of the Eighth Amendment bar against cruel and unusual punishment. If the execution is carried out, Frazier will be the fourth condemned murderer dispatched by nitrogen gas.  UPDATE:  Frazier’s execution was carried out without incident on the morning of February 6.

A year after murdering Brown, Frazier was arrested for the attempted rape and murder of 14-year-old Crystal Kendrick in Detroit, Michigan. In 1993 he was convicted of the murder and two additional rapes and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole (LWOP). During an interview with detectives regarding Kendrick’s murder, Frazier admitted killing Pauline Brown in Alabama. In 1996 Frazier was returned to Alabama and convicted of the Brown murder for which he received a death sentence. There was no question about his guilt in either of the murders or rapes.

In a response to Frazier’s nitrogen gas challenge, the Alabama Attorney General argues that the courts had already rejected similar arguments in the three other nitrogen gas cases.  In those cases the Eleventh Circuit held that the protocol posed no risk of “conscious suffocation” that “can create an Eighth Amendment problem.”

In another petition filed last week, Frazier’s lawyers argue that the law requires that he be returned to Michigan to serve out his LWOP sentence. But on Wednesday, an attorney for the Michigan Department of Corrections asked the judge to dismiss Frazier’s case. “While Michigan takes no position on the imposition of the death penalty in this case, Michigan does not seek to return Frazier to a Michigan correctional facility,” the court filing read. Frazier cannot make the state take him back into custody, Michigan’s filing said. The inmate’s question about state custody, said Michigan lawyers, is one for state court and not federal court.

Barring a last-minute court ruling sparing him, this serial rapist and murderer will pay for his crimes on February 6.